


Looking for Lost Time

by Crimson_Voltaire



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia (mention), Implied/Referenced Torture, Memory Loss, Original Percival Graves Needs a Hug, Stockholm Syndrome, memory repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 06:42:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10714260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crimson_Voltaire/pseuds/Crimson_Voltaire
Summary: “What do you remember?”In the silence that follows the question, Graves can hear water dripping, somewhere. It’s an incessant, endless noise, a constant pattering that gets inside his head and sets his teeth on edge. Above the noise, Graves can hear Seraphina waiting for an answer. Graves says nothing. She maintains her silence for a few moments more before raising one perfect eyebrow."Graves?"He looks up at her, finds those cold dark eyes and represses a shudder."I don't know," he says, "I don't remember anything."





	Looking for Lost Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little something I whipped up for someone on Tumblr who requested a universe in which Graves doesn't remember his abduction by Grindelwald or captivity. Ensue angst. 
> 
> Warnings for brief mentions of homophobia, something similar to Stockholm syndrome/memory repression and Graves being in pain. He's had a right go-around, so I took liberty with it. 
> 
> As per usual, I don't have a beta reader. I try to catch the mistakes but some slip through the cracks. Constructive criticism is welcome! Please leave your comments if you have any, I'd love to know what you think.

**Looking For Lost Time**

“ _The remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were._ ”  
\-- Marcel Proust

* * *

“ _What do you remember_?”

_In the silence that follows the question, Graves can hear water dripping, somewhere. It’s an incessant, endless noise, a constant pattering that gets inside his head and sets his teeth on edge. The room is frigid; austere and grey, with hard metal and rough wood and no signs of comfort at all which only make it feel colder._  
  
_He doesn’t look up right away, letting his eyes sweep across the metal of the table (is this where Scamander sat?) and down at his own rough, work-worn hands. Then he looks up, into Seraphina’s stare. She’s dressed to match the room he thinks, steely pantsuit and shining head-dress that catches the white light and makes his eyes hurt. She’s cold, from the tips of her polished boots to the expression she’s set her face in, cold and detached, like an observer gazing at him from behind two inches of glass. Graves grinds his teeth, pulling his jacket a little more tightly about his own frame, willing away the chill that wants to settle in his bones and make them ache._  
_Seraphina raises one perfect, fine brow._  
  
_“Graves?”_  
  
_Percival finally meets her eyes, thinks that if he looks long enough, he can see a hint of warmth behind the metal in those irises. “I don’t know,” he says, “I don’t remember anything.”_

* * *

 

It’s the truth. The honest to god truth. The last thing Percival Graves remembers before waking up in the hospital was signing off on the absolute cluster-fuck that was the Second Salem case.  
It was the request for the use of Obliviation, Graves thinks, which is funny because he was signing the paperwork after the work was done (damn the brass and their paperwork).

The next thing Percival knows, he’s jerking awake in a room that’s too bright, and smells of cleaning fluids and some god-awful flowers. There’s shouting, someone yelling that he’s awake ( _of course he’s awake, why are they in his damn-_ ) and then Graves realizes he isn’t in his apartment. He’s nowhere near it at all. The sheets on the hospital bed are stark and stiff and confining. It’s like a straightjacket about his ribs. Percival kicks them off with all the coordination of a fawn learning to stand, limbs flailing wildly. In his struggle, his foot makes contact with someone’s thigh.

Suddenly, there are hands on his biceps and his own thighs and his knees, voices calling for him to calm down, that he’s alright.  
“Of course I’m alright,” Graves finds himself answering, “What the fuck is going on?”  
But he stops struggling, body going limp against the hard mattress. His chest is heaving, high on some strange adrenalin rush he can’t explain. A kind, matronly nurse smiles at him, righting her cap.  
  
“It’s alright, Mr. Graves, you’ve had a right go-around. You’re safe now.”  
Safe? Graves glances down at himself, wiggles his fingers, looks at his toes. Everything is attached, he can feel his magic pulsing beneath the surface, electric and eager as always. His body doesn’t hurt, even the ache in his knees that was getting to be an old friend is gone.  
Graves meets the nurse’s eyes, holding her gaze and asks, “Why am I here?”  
  
She frowns, suddenly, as if those were the last four words she expected to hear. “You don’t remember?”  
“No, please, do enlighten me,” Graves snaps, and then feels bad because it wasn’t her fault. The nurse gives him a wary expression, like she’s about to reveal something deep and dark, some secret she’d promised to keep or something. The words that come out of her mouth are most definitely the last Graves ever expected to hear.  
“You were captured by Gellert Grindelwald, Mr. Graves. Your team found you under the floorboards in your guest bedroom yesterday afternoon.”

* * *

_“You don’t remember anything?” Pickery’s voice is deadpan, her expression one of disbelief, “Nothing at all?”_

_Graves feels the uncharacteristic urge to fiddle with his sleeve cuff, a sort of restless energy that has him picking at the fabric, looking for loose threads. He’s dropped Pickery’s gaze again, has to find the energy to will his eyes back up, gazing at her._  
_“No.”_

_There’s a smacking sound and a dull thud as Seraphina’s palms collide with the table in a sudden show of force. For an instant, her armour slides away and Percival can see all the rage, and the fear and the hurt on her face, can see the stress eating away at her facade, before she snarls at him._  
  
_“Damn it Perce,” Pickery roars, “You were captured and held hostage by Gellert fucking Grindelwald for two. weeks. When we found you, you didn’t have a scratch on you. You weren’t injured, you weren’t unconscious, you were sleeping! When you woke up, you said you don’t fucking remember anything. Now, I’ve had the best legilimens we have access to go ripping through Grindelwald’s brain, and there’s nothing. I’ve had the healers go through yours and there’s nothing. No sign of obliviation, no mental scarring in your mind. Nothing. So,”_

_And here she takes a deep breath, retreating back into her calm, collected shell. Seraphina pins him with a dangerous look. “Would you like to tell me what the fuck is going on?”_

_Graves feels sick, at the mention of Grindelwald’s name, like his gut is sentient and is recoiling at the mere thought of the bleached pineapple. But when he searches, when he looks back and tries to recall, there’s nothing. No fog, no feeling of a blanket smothering his memories. No hazy edges that would suggest tampering, nothing. Like there was nothing there in the first place. Bile rises in Percival’s throat. “I don’t know.”_

* * *

Surprisingly, they let him keep his job. Graves is pretty sure he gapes like a fish for a solid minute when Seraphina first hands him the casefile in the hospital and says she expected him Monday. The President regards his expression for a second before huffing through her nose.

“The Council and I agree it is safer to have you remain at your post. That way, we can monitor the situation.”

_Keep an eye on you, make sure you aren’t a traitor, are the unspoken words_. They pierce his side like a lance, sticking between his ribs and make it hard to breath. But, Graves nods anyways and accepts the thick stack of papers. They both ignore the way his left hand trembles ever so slightly.

Now, sitting behind his desk, Graves wishes he’d fought her, wishes he’d resigned on the spot because this isn’t worth it. He’s stuck slogging through a mountain of paperwork that has suddenly appeared in his inbox, and the fact that someone is obviously reviewing every decision he makes doesn’t help matters. It’s a blatant, in your face, _we don’t trust you_. And it stings. It does. Graves knows they’re being careful. Graves knows how badly MACUSA’s been shaken by what went down, but a bitter little coal beneath his heart says serves them right for being so unobservant in the first place. It just sucks that he has to shoulder the blame.

Everything is magnified by the obvious distrust in most of his Aurors eyes. He remembers how they used to look at him, with respect and something bordering on reverence. Now, they stare and they gawk and they talk behind his back. They question him, in situations where never before has Graves been questioned. If the brass’s monitoring stung, than his Auror’s behaviour is a third degree burn, pulling and stretching and hurting so, god damned bad. _I’ve fought with you_ , Graves thinks to himself, _I’ve bled for you. How could you believe that I would follow Grindelwald_?

A week in, Graves starts bringing bits and pieces of his paper mountain home with him to review. It helps at night when he can’t manage more than a few hours of sleep, helps lull him after nightmares he instantly forgets and distracts him from the strange aches that sometimes wrack his body. But it doesn’t help with the stares, or the whispers that follow him like ghosts. They sit on the wide swooping shoulders of his coat, they bury themselves in the heavy collar and hide behind the shell of his ear. It makes Graves sick and sets him on edge. Was he really so similar to Gellert fucking Grindelwald that he could be mistaken for a terrorist and the Dark Lord himself? Was he really such a ruthless, single-minded, evil man? When he’d bled for his Aurors, for his country, when he’d built his career on protecting them? Was Graves really so terrible?

The questions roil around in his head. They keep him up at night when the nightmares don’t and end up robbing him of any rest at all.

A month after Graves is found, he is going on two days without sleep and the reports in front of him are swimming, dancing around in a way he knows isn’t normal. He sighs, sitting up and rubs his eyes with the back of both hands. Coffee, he decides, he needs another coffee (and ignores the fact that it’s his fourth in half that many hours).  
Stepping out into the bullpen, Graves is met by sudden silence. It’s like walking through a train station and having all the hubub and clatter and noise just stop as soon as your foot hits the first tile. The silence is so loud Graves’ ears pop. It also gives him the opportunity to hear the tail end of someone’s conversation, as it dies away into the quiet.  
It’s just a single word, but it shreds through Graves like the killing curse, tearing through whatever self control has kept him from shattering for four weeks. “...turncoat.”

It’s a junior, Laurelwood; a fresh faced young woman with bright green eyes and curly black hair. She’s got a sneer on her lips, eyes hard until she realizes the room’s gone quiet. Then they widen, with horror or shock Graves doesn’t know. He’s too busy trying to keep himself breathing.

“Would you like to repeat that, Laurelwood?”

Graves is surprised his voice comes out so steady because he feels like he’s dying. He feels like some great giant has taken him by the ribcage and is squeezing, squeezing, until Graves’s lungs burst and his spine cracks and his heart can’t take it anymore. The room is spinning. Through the fog, Graves can see the instant Laurelwood’s eyes go hard and bright again. Defiance is an ugly thing when it’s coupled with the cruel words she spits.

“Yes, I would, sir. You’re nothin’ but a dirty traitor. You probably spent those two weeks with Grindelwald’s cock up your ass, and yous come crawlin’ back crying you can’t remember nothin’ cause his plan didn’t work out. You’re a coward, and a traitor.”

Graves’ lungs have burst, his spine is cracked, his heart can’t take it anymore.

* * *

 

_Seraphina is still gazing at him. He can tell she’s getting tired of this. Graves is tired too. And his head is pounding so badly he can barely see straight, let alone push against whatever void inhabits where memories of his captivity should be._

_“They’re worried you’re conspiring with Grindelwald, Perce.”_

_She sounds resigned and so, very, tired. It feels like someone’s slapped him. Graves recoils, horror flitting through him faster than light travels. He swallows, realizes he can’t find his voice, breathes for a moment and then tries again._

_“I’ve spent twenty years of my life protecting our world from the likes of him! Why the hell would I follow Grindelwald?”_

_His voice comes out as a broken whisper. Seraphina just shakes her head and shrugs._

* * *

Graves slams back into his brain with all the force of a bludgeoning spell. He actually steps back, having lost his footing in the moment it takes to process the memory. Graves’ heart is rabbiting, his breathing is probably too quick. He can barely find his voice to speak. All eyes in the room are on him.

“Very well,” Graves whispers, more to himself than to his Aurors. There’s a sense of hopelessness and disappointment that settles over Graves’ shoulders like a wet blanket. When he blinks he can see the cold and rainy Irish coast, the bleak rocks and the heavy green of the rolling hills, from when he used to go visit _Móraí_ in the summers of his teenage years. He remembers the last year he visited, when she was sick and dying, that’s where he’s felt this helplessness before.

“Very well,” he says again, louder this time.

“If that is what you truly think of me, than I will have my resignation in to Madam President by the morning. It isn’t fair to ask you to work for a man you can’t trust.”

The words are bitter, but it feels like freedom in his mouth. Graves turns on one heel, but stops midway. When he looks back, some of the Seniors look stricken and Goldstein is actually crying. Graves can’t be sure though, his eyes could be playing tricks on him.

The heaviness of the hopelessness is constricting, pressing down on his ruined lungs and his weeping heart. It battles with that wonderful freedom in his chest. Graves finds himself speaking again, although he couldn’t tell you why. Maybe he’s trying to justify it all to himself.

“I’ve spent twenty years of my life at MACUSA, protecting this country, this city, protecting you. Hell, I’ve trained half the people in this room. I’ve bled for you. All I ever wanted was for you to be safe, for this country to be safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. If you can really think that I would follow Gellert Grindelwald, then I’ve failed you, and I’ve failed MACUSA…” Graves trails off for a moment, realizing he’s trembling violently, “And you have failed yourselves.”

With that, Percival Graves stalks out of the Investigations Department, back ramrod straight and body quaking like an aspen tree. He is hopelessness and joy, sorrow and relief.

In the morning, his resignation is sitting on Seraphina’s desk.

* * *

_Someone’s rubbing his back, a small hand rubbing up and down his spine. The heat radiates through the thin gown the nursing staff have given him._

_“What happened out there, Perce?”_

_The voice is soft, gentle, kind and with the slightest hint of a long faded southern drawl. He knows that voice well, he’s heard it almost every day since he was eleven years old. Percival leans back into the touch without thinking, squeezing his eyes shut. Unbeknownst to the woman sitting behind him, little snippets of memory dance behind his eyes, like pieces of an abstract jigsaw puzzle. They don’t make sense, but they’re there, haunting him like a phantom. They’ll be gone in the morning._

_“I don’t know, Sera” Percival says, drawing his knees up underneath him, pressing his face into both hands so that his words are muffled, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Móraí - An informal Irish term for grandma 
> 
> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it! Please let me know what you think!


End file.
